


unwanted stories

by MrsCalculation



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 09:20:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14997755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsCalculation/pseuds/MrsCalculation
Summary: Barnes tells Sam and Steve about his time with Hydra. This time it's from Steve's point of view.





	unwanted stories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [owlet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlet/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Long Road Begins at Home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5339822) by [owlet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlet/pseuds/owlet). 



> Inspired by The Long Road Begins at Home, chapter 11.
> 
> Please heed all warnings for that chapter! They are, and I quote,  
> "VERY DIFFICULT STUFF HERE: MENTIONS OF TRAUMA AND TORTURE, BOTH EMOTIONAL AND PHYSICAL
> 
> Please be prepared for terrible things and care for yourself before/while reading."

After finally passing out around three in the morning, exhausted from social interaction in the good way that makes him feel light and excited, Steve wakes up around eight. When he’d knocked his pillow off the bed he’d decided it was time to wake up, but a few more minutes with his face pressed against the sheets won’t hurt.

It’s not like he’ll be getting back to sleep anyway. He’s too stressed. As fun as Sam was last night, probably still on a high from being able to fly again, Steve knows that Sam is going to be the one responsible, emotionally-healthy adult in the house today. Steve knows he’s been treating Bucky wrong, he _knows_ , and as much as he wishes he could figure out how to make it right, he doesn’t want to talk about it first. He just wants everything to be fixed so they can move on.

  
It’s not that simple and he knows it, but that doesn’t mean he can’t wish.

Steve sighs and scrubs at the back of his head, deciding he’s put it off long enough. He twists his way upright and out of his sheets, lets himself take another minute to just _be_ , then looks to Bucky on his monitor. Bucky is sitting at his desk, curled around a coffee mug, and Steve can’t help but smile a little at that. He looks so peaceful. Steve waves at him, and when Bucky greets him, Steve hops up, pops into the bathroom to try to configure his hair, grabs a mug of coffee, then knocks on Bucky’s door.

“Yes.”

“Can I come in?” Steve asks.

“Yes.”

Bucky stares at Steve for an awkwardly long moment before blinking at him. Steve wonders what he’s thinking.

“Thanks for making coffee, Buck,” he says in an attempt to ease the awkwardness.

“Welcome.”

Well. That didn’t work. Steve is out of things to say.

Bucky waves him towards his bed and Steve sits down, thankful to take a moment before having to say something else.

“How was your evening?”

“Good,” Bucky says. “Watched the party. Ordered some books to read.”

Oh. “Jeez, you watched the whole thing?” Steve asks. It makes him feel worse about staying there when Bucky left, but Bucky clearly looked like he needed to be alone after such an eventful day.

“Confirm.”

“I thought I was gonna have to carry Sam out of there,” Steve says, because at least that gives him something to talk about. “Remind me never to be in the same room as Barton and Darcy at the same time ever again.”

“Bet they hope Stark has some crazy hangover cure.”

“He’d have to, right?”

“Confirm.”

“But it was okay? That I didn’t come back here with you?”

“Yeah.”

Steve relaxes slightly since Bucky clearly seems okay with how his night ended up. He still feels bad, and he’s let the silence between them stretch on long enough for it to become uncomfortable, but at least he knows Bucky isn’t mad at him.

But Bucky is still staring, and Steve hates that he feels like he has to fill the silence. He’s about to ask what books Bucky ordered when he hears what sounds like Sam sitting up in the living room. Steve raises his eyebrows and tilts his head towards the living room in question, and he and Bucky both go to greet Sam.

“Morning,” Sam says as he stretches. “Can I steal some of that coffee?”

Bucky pours a mug and sets in on the counter as Steve asks how Sam slept.

“All right, but dude. Clint is nuts. I’m too old to drink like that.”

Steve grins at him. “Shoulda figured you wouldn’t be able to handle it,” he says.

They end up sniping at each other until they end up in the gym, Bucky practically catapulting his way up the rock wall as Steve goads Sam near cardiac arrest on the treadmills.

And Steve was going easy on him.

By the time they’re all back to the apartment, Steve is starting to get worried about Bucky. His eyes look like they aren’t seeing what’s in front of him, and his shoulders look tighter than they did this morning.

None of that is helped when Sam asks, “So beating the crap out of each other on New Year’s Eve. Whose genius idea was that?”

Steve knew this was coming, but he still can’t help but panic a little. He focuses on breathing evenly and not clenching his fists.

“Mine, I guess,” he says. “I mean, we weren’t going to Tony’s party, and Bucky couldn’t seem to settle. I thought a workout might wear him out a little.”

“Workout?” Sam asks him, his tone almost irritatingly dry.

Before Steve can answer, Bucky steps in.

“Other options were given: running, weights. I chose sparring.”

Sam halfway rolls his eyes, stopping to stare up at the ceiling before completing the roll. “So you’re both stupid,” he says.

“Sam,” Steve says sharply. He’s not letting Bucky take the fall for him.

“Tell me _exactly_ what went down.”

Steve breathes in deeply. “Like I said: he just couldn’t seem to settle down, wouldn’t stop pacing. I thought maybe he needed to bleed off some energy.”

“That true, Barnes?”

Steve looks over to see Bucky shrug. He knows Bucky is avoiding the question.

“Barnes,” Sam says, firmer this time. “You were keyed up?”

“Over-stimulated, confirm,” Bucky says. “Had not slept in over twenty-eight hours.”

“What?” Steve asks. He wants to ask why Bucky didn’t _tell_ him he wasn’t sleeping, but he can’t find the words.

“Y’all have to be kidding me right now,” Sam says, levelling Steve with a terrifying glare. “Steve.”

How the hell is he supposed to respond to that?

“Okay,” Sam says, “so you were starting from a baseline level of stupid already, then you went down to the gym. Then what?” He sounds surprisingly calm about the whole thing.

“Bucky went toward the ring,” Steve says. “I had to call him back so we could get the protective gear.”

Steve hears a slosh and looks over to see Bucky spilling coffee on the counter. He puts down the pitcher and backs away from them. “Bucky?” Steve asks, trying not to let panic color his voice.

“What gear did you use?” Sam asks, cleaning up the spill and handing Bucky his mug.

“Just normal gear,” Steve says over the sound of Bucky’s arm reconfiguring. He hates everything that sound means. “Head protectors. He didn’t want it at first, but once he had it on, he didn’t argue anymore about it. Let me wrap up his hands and put his gloves on for him.”

Sam looks at Steve, then quickly looks back to Bucky. “You had to put the gloves on for him?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Steve answers, less comfortable by the second. “He. He balked a bit at the bite guard.”

“And then?”

“He seemed fine. Really calm. Not aggressive at all, mostly just blocking me, until I got in a lucky shot, and he just lashed out.”

“Goddammit, Steve.”

“What?” What did he do?

“Look at him.”

Steve looks at Bucky, whose eyes are wide and unfocused and reminiscent of a terrified animal. His whole body looks ready to run.

“Bucky.”

“Hey, Barnes,” Sam says, far more gently than he’s been talking to Steve. “Why don’t you go sit where it’s safe?”

Bucky’s jaw twitches slightly, then he moves mechanically to his corner of the sofa. Sam follows him to the coffee table.

“Better?” he asks after Bucky has had a second to settle into his surroundings. Bucky looks up, like he’s surprised to see that Sam and Steve moved with him.

“I don’t understand,” Steve says.

“It wasn’t calm, was it, Barnes? When you had the gear on?”

Bucky shakes his head, looking surprisingly childlike in the motion.

“Can you say what it was?” Sam waits through the silence that follows, then says, “it’s okay if you can’t. But it would help to say it.”

Bucky’s jaw twitches again, then he nods.

“Compliance,” he says hoarsely.

“What do you mean, compliance?” Steve asks, terrified to know the answer.

“Obey the handler,” Bucky says, quiet and mechanical, like a recitation. “Disobedience means punishment.”

“Hey,” Sam says, saving Steve from having to find words. “Okay. Compliance. What caused that? The gear?”

Bucky nods. Steve goes cold.

“All of it, or any piece in particular?”

When Bucky takes a minute to respond, Sam says encouragingly, “it’s okay, Barnes. None of that stuff is here.”

“Head piece,” Bucky says. “Bite guard.”

“God, Bucky,” Steve whispers, and he didn’t mean to, but it just slipped out.

“Can you take five good breaths for me, Barnes?”

Steve watches Bucky breath in and out, each breath in getting less shaky. His jaw twitches when he reaches five.

“You had stuff like that back at Hydra?” Sam asks. Bucky nods. “Barnes.”

Bucky looks up towards nothing in particular, then breathes out, “can’t protect. Just give me a minute, Steve,” so softly, so much like his Bucky, _Steve’s_ Bucky, that Steve begins to crumble.

“Three more breaths,” Sam says, and this time Steve breathes with him.

“I know you don’t want to say it,” Sam says, “but I swear to you, it helps. If you can.” Bucky shakes his head. “One word at a time,” Sam says.

Steve watches Bucky breathe again, listens as he says “bite guard. Electrical stimulation of the cortex through devices placed on the face. Hands immobilized to prevent injuring handlers. Process for wiping personality and memory.”

And Steve can’t stand still anymore. “Jesus,” he says, stepping forward. “Bucky. Bucky, I am so—”

“ _Steve_ ,” Sam says sharply. Steve sees Bucky flinch. “Don’t touch him right now, okay?”

“Sorry,” Steve says, and he _is_ , he keeps making it _worse_ , and — “I’m sorry.”

“We never saw that. Steve’s got a file on you, you know? It described some pretty bad things, but it never said exactly how they wiped you.”

“File’s out of date,” Bucky says, voice cracking.

“You saw it?” Steve asks. Why? Why would Bucky want to see that again?

“Confirm.”

“They left stuff out, Barnes?”

Bucky’s mouth half-twists into a terrifying, humorless smile. He ticks his head slightly to the side and back. “Left stuff out,” he mutters, garbled and with traces of 1930s Brooklyn. “You assholes don’t know one _eighth_ of it, thank you very much.” His jaw twitches again. “Protect who, mission?” His eyes dart to the side. “Are we protecting Steve now? Or me? Because you know what would protect me right now? A fucking _wipe_ to take these fucking memories away.”

Steve wants to die, here and now, as he listens to Bucky. It doesn’t seem like Bucky knows he’s talking, and Steve wants to tear apart every person who ever did this to Bucky, then die himself for failing him.

“Hey,” Sam says, extending a hand towards Bucky.

“Do. Not. Touch. Me.” Bucky stands, looks around jerkily and manically. He freezes, then his posture sags slightly. When he walks towards the front door, Steve panics, but he just presses himself into the corner, head tucked down with his hair blocking his face.

“I’m sorry, Barnes,” Sam says. “That was stupid of me.”

Bucky shrugs.

“Can you tell us about that?”

And Steve breaks. He doesn’t want Bucky to deal with this another second, and, selfishly, Steve doesn’t want to have to deal with this anymore. He wants nothing more than to die hearing this, but last time he did that, he left Bucky to rot, so he does what he can.

“Sam, that’s enough. You can’t make him—”

He’s cut off by Bucky rapping his metal fist against the wall.

“Can’t make me, pal,” Bucky says in that hollow voice with the Brooklyn accent. “Sure you can. Just keep it up with the _please_ s and the _Bucky_ s and the _come on_ s and you can make me. That’s why we’re in this shit show now, isn’t it?”

And Steve knows Bucky doesn’t know he’s talking. His words don’t sound harsh or accusatory or anything. His words don’t sound _anything_. “Bucky,” Steve says, unable to help himself, because he hurts so badly for what Bucky has been forced to become.

Then Bucky is suddenly off, talking back and forth to himself with no room for interruption.

“Negative response to touching. Identified: panic response. Learned instinctive reaction based on experience. The body remembers what the mind resists recalling. Inventory categories: testing, reprogramming, punishment.” He sounds flat, his voice deep and matter-of-fact and so very _Barnes_ of him, but then,

“no, you can’t tell him this, stop.”

It’s Bucky’s voice, _Bucky’s_ , the voice Steve swore he heard at his bedside those winters that no one thought he would make it, Bucky pleading with him to wake up through choking sobs and hiccups, and if Steve had any illusions that he wouldn’t be crying today, they’re gone now.

“First category: testing,” Bucky says, back to Barnes. “Long-term medical monitoring of serum and freezing effects. Multiple efforts to implant tracking and remote deaccessioning devices. Device migration owing to serum effects. Device removal. Extensive testing of pain tolerance. Extensive testing of serum healing factor.”

Steve sees Bucky tick his head to the side again, his voice shifting back into panic. “They never used any anesthesia, Steve. They cut me open over and over and wrote down notes about how much it took for me to finally pass out. I’ve seen my own liver Steve. They made bets on how long I could scream before my voice gave out. I remember what it smells like when I’m on fire.”

Bucky breathes in, wet. “Stop. He can’t know this. It will only hurt him. Stop.” He twitches slightly.

“Second category: reprogramming. The mind resisted asset protocols. Long-term missions resulted in memory leakage, during which the original personality attempted to break through. Applied: sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, starvation, hypnosis, electroshock. Applied: close confinement, solitary lockdown. Original duration of programming, four point five years.”

“They told me you were dead Steve. I waited for you. I waited for you to come get me but you never came. I always remembered your name no matter what they did to me Steve but you never came, and then they told me you were dead. They showed me the newspapers. You were dead. No one would save me because you were dead, Steve.”

Bucky’s head moves to the side, more violently this time, and somehow even more desperately he says, “don’t say it, Steve will hear you.”

“So I let them have me.”

Steve chokes down a sob and steps forward, his legs dangerously wobbly under him. He wants to reach for Bucky, but he can’t. He can’t. It will only hurt him more. He squeezes his eyes shut.

Barnes starts again. “Experimentation with programming techniques. Identified: waterboarding, drug regimens, direct cortical stimulation. Death and revival via drowning, suffocation, artificially introduced arrhythmia.”

As he fights not to throw up, Steve hears a shuffle. He opens his eyes. Bucky is sitting now.

“Stop now,” childhood Bucky says. He twitches.

“No,” he says, this time sounding more like when Bucky got his draft notice. “No, I might as well finish it now.”

“Third category: punishment. Disobedience rated punishment. Incomplete mission success rated punishment. Extended mission duration rated punishment. Any indication of personality leakage rated punishment.”

_Leakage._ His humanity.

Bucky’s voice continues. “Bored guards rated punishment. Tuesday rated punishment.”

“Inventory: confinement, beating, sleep deprivation, confinement, sexual abuse, drug regimens, confinement.”

Steve leans against the table, unable to trust himself to stand.

“They hurt me every way they could think of Steve. Sometimes they made up new ways just for fun.”

Every time Bucky’s voice reverts to how Steve remembers it, it pitches higher, more frantic, to the point that Steve almost doesn’t recognize it.

“There is evidence.”

“Don’t let him see, _no_ , Steve don’t look.”

Bucky never did let Steve know when he was hurting. Steve wonders how much he missed before.

Bucky takes off his shirt and Steve sees, not for the first time, three straight, puckered lines down his back, two on the left side and one on the right.

“I saw those when your shoulder was hurt, Buck,” Steve says, and his voice cracks, but it comes out stronger than expected. “Where’d you get them?”

“Whipping. With chains.”

“Don’t you. Heal like I do?”

“Healing efficiency lower than original serum permits scar formation given sufficient wound severity. Cryofreezing required for full scar resolution. No cryo subsequent to receiving these.”

Steve stands, shocked, and watches Bucky breathe.

“Somebody gave you those in DC?” Sam asks, clearly enraged.

“Wounds date to three weeks before present consciousness,” Bucky says. “Five lacerations requiring suture, including three requiring dermal suture to close tissue over bone. Handler: Rumlow, Brock, chastised for excessive force mid-mission.”

“Why would he,” Steve chokes out. He can’t finish the sentence.

“Because he was an asshole, Steve,” Sam says.

Bucky is silent for a moment, then Steve sees his jaw twitch. A second later, his whole body droops. He pulls his shirt over his back but doesn’t put it on.

Steve doesn’t know how to help.

“What the hell, briefing,” Bucky mutters, quiet, but he sounds more in control. He shivers.

“Can I get you a blanket, Barnes?” Sam asks. Bucky nods.

As Sam walks away, Steve takes the opportunity to step closer to Bucky, where Bucky can see him but where he is still out of reach.

“Can I sit down? Over here.” Bucky nods, and Steve curls himself next to the wall, still several feet from Bucky.

Sam comes back. “Blanket incoming,” he says, then drapes the blanket over Bucky’s shoulders. Bucky flinches, but then relaxes under the weight of it.

Steve still doesn’t know how to help. He never was very good at dealing with Bucky’s breakdowns, since Bucky almost never let Steve see them.

He thinks about all the times he’s struggled since waking up. He thinks of how alone he was before New York, how he dreams of aliens and missile strikes on the city, how Peggy won’t ever remember him, not really. He thinks of how he hopes he never has to fly a plane again.

He thinks about how he never wants to be sent on a mission to somewhere icy. He thinks about how much he hates ice at all.

“I don’t like ice in my drink,” he says, and it sounds stupid, but right now it’s all he’s ready to talk about. “Can’t stand the stuff, ever since I defrosted.”

“That must be a real hardship, pal,” Bucky says, with a trace of sarcasm, or at least a trace of what sarcasm Bucky can inflect now.

“It really is.” Steve doesn’t want to go into the details, but one day he’ll talk about the first time he tried to drink ice water and felt like he was freezing and drowning all over again.

“Did they put you in a chair too.”

“What?”

“To make you. Did they put you in a chair.”

Steve’s heart aches. Putting Bucky in that damn chair didn’t make him. It unmade him, again and again, until Bucky finally came back.

“Good question, Barnes,” Sam says.

Bucky has made himself.

“No, Buck. It was kind of a tube thing. But I climbed into it on my own power.”

“Did it hurt.”

“Hurt like hell. But after I came out of it, that was the first time in my life that nothing hurt at all.”

Bucky leans his head against the wall. “You can move ten centimeters closer,” he says.

Steve barks out a harsh, humorless laugh. “We did this once before.”

“Did what.”

“Sat like this. Me just out of reach, you facing the wall. Right after Azzano. The first time Zola had you. You never did talk to me then. Just sat, until you shook it off and decided to pretend you were fine.”

Bucky stills for a minute, then says, “I don’t want to remember that right now.”

Steve had figured he wouldn’t want to. “You don’t ever have to, Bucky. I’ll remember it for both of us.”

Bucky motions to Steve, and Steve moves closer.

“How’d you do this, Barnes?” Sam asks. “How’d you make it to here?”

“Got a new mission,” Bucky says, and he stretches his arm to close the length between him and Steve, poking a finger into his shoulder.

The touch relaxes Steve. “You always were the strong one.” Bucky just stares. “I’m sorry I was so stupid, Bucky. It won’t happen again.”

Bucky twists to look at Sam, who grins.

Yeah, maybe Steve shouldn’t make promises he can’t keep.

“I’m so proud of y’all,” Sam says. “And I’ll be even prouder if next time you talk to each other first without waiting for me.”

“I feel like a wrung-out dishrag,” Steve says.

Bucky looks at him for a second, then stands. Steve is impressed with how steady he is.

“If you’ll take one more piece of advice from the seasoned professional in the room,” Sam says, “we’re gonna wash our faces, order a bunch of pizzas, drink a bunch of beer and watch the dumbest movie we can find on TV. And tomorrow will be better.”

If it were anyone else, Steve would doubt their optimism. But this is Sam.

“Confirm,” Bucky says.

“Confirm,” Steve says, laughing.

Yeah. Tomorrow will be better.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! As always, call me out on any formatting/grammar/continuity errors. This is unedited and it is 3am. There are bound to be errors.
> 
> If you are Owlet and you hate me for basically stealing your work, please let me know and I will take this down!!!
> 
> I wrote this while bumping Ariana Grande because it is sad and I needed a pick-me-up.
> 
> Find me on tumblr @MrsCalculation!


End file.
